Microsoft at E3 2013: Xbox One livestream and live event coverage

The start of Geek Week, Microsoft’s E3 keynote, commences in just a few minutes. Geek.com will be following the livestream and updating this post in real-time, culling the important bits from the presentation so you won’t miss them. So sit back and stay tuned for Microsoft’s E3 Xbox reveal — the action starts at 12:30pm EST.

Microsoft’s E3 livesteam is embedded below, and it’ll the main place where all the (hopeful) magic will happen. We’re looking forward to new details about the Xbox One and all the games we hope to see later this year, from a new Halo to another Fable, and — if rumors are true — even Mirror’s Edge 2. It’s hopefully going to be a big day for gamers, something that the initial Xbox One reveal wasn’t.

2:07: That’s it, folks. What did you think? Too many first-person shooters? Not enough first-person shooters? Did it need more Madden? Was the lack of Madden the exact amount of Madden you were hoping for? Were you happy with the focus on games, or did you miss all the talk about TV and Fantasy sports? I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more about everything over the next few days during the conference.

2:00: Respawn Entertainment, the guys responsible for all of your favorite (the older ones) Call of Duty, show off their new FPS, Titanfall. A lot of parkour, a lot of soldiers that look like Master Chief. Solider running at a huge mech, but then activates some kind of invisibility mode. Graphics and animation don’t look quite up to next-gen par — at least not more than some of the other games shown today, but at least there’s a lot of stuff happening on the screen at once. Large open environments, lots of first-person shooting. “Get ready for Titanfall,” as a mech drops into the environment and the player climbs in. Gameplay seems similar to non-mech shooting, but with a mech HUD. Player gets out of HUD, shoots more things. Again, a lot of stuff seemed to be happening on screen at once, which is nice. Shipping in spring of 2014.

1:56: Xbox One launching this November, for $499.

1:54: Cloaked man wandering around the desert. Huge planet revealed in the background. Slightly smaller-than-a-planet robot rises up through the sand, and blows back the hood of the man, turns out to be (probably) Master Chief. Halo on Xbox One. Not entirely sure why Master Chief needed to wear a ragged cloth cloak over space armor. Maybe space sand is space armor’s one true weakness.

1:51: Quick clip from Black Tusk Studios of a guy scaling down the side of a building in front of a backdrop of fireworks. Very, very pretty. Fireworks tend to do that in video games. Breaks in through window. The end.

1:50: New game, Below, top-down perspective of actioning and puzzling it seems. Very, very zoomed out. Difficult to tell what is going on. Color us intrigued!

1:42:Battlefield time. Sound broke again. Demonstrator told the audience to “be quiet” while they were making jokes. Demonstrator walks off stage twice before coming back and the sound finally working. Some first-person boat shooting, otherwise known as an FPBS game. Fighter jets sliding off an aircraft carrier. Lots of FPBS going on. Very dark smoke and explosions everywhere. Player jumps into a boat, and then actually starts shooting in first person from a boat. First-person boat shooter all the way. Lot of physics happening everywhere, a little hard to see amidst the smoke and explosions.

1:40:The Witcher 3 coming to Xbox One. Sadly, no one clapped. PC Master Race is very unhappy with Xbox fans. The game will be free-roaming and set in an open-world environment. Trailer showed basic Witcher stuff, magic, wolves, forests. The audience clapped at the end. PC Master Race can sit down.

1:31:Dead Rising 3. New hero, Nick Ramos. Trailer begins 72 hours after a zombie outbreak. Nick Ramos, seemingly a mechanic, fends off the zombie apocalypse with his trusty wrench. “Rich, open world with no load times.” Nick duct-tapes a flashlight to a handgun, making the deadliest of weapons, the gunlight. Nick, after upgrading to a regular automatic rifle sans flashlight, runs through a ton of on-screen zombies. Picks up a sledge hammer, then a chainsaw, and uses both on random zombies. It’s pretty similar to past entries in the series. Now, Nick hopped in a car and is crashing through hordes of zombies, and barricades, and basically everything else. Nick is faced with a huge horde of zombies, but the demonstrator uses Smart Glass to call down artillery support. Available this holiday.

1:30:Crimson Dragon, by creator of Panzer Dragoon, exclusively on Xbox One. Hilariously, the sound doesn’t play, and the audience begins making sound effects for the game. The game features a bunch of dragons flying around attacking each other in the sky.

1:19:Project Spark, some kind of game creation game. Demonstrators using Smart Glass and Kinect, spouting voice commands to generate landscapes, and Smart Glass drawing in finer details, like a moat and bridge into a wilderness. Dropping in buildings to form a little town, which is now being invaded by goblins. The demonstrators are invoking fireballs and turned a little rock person into a large rock mech.

1:17: A quick clip from Microsoft Studios, a murder mystery called D4, very cell-shaded like a comic book.

1:14: Now, Quantum Break, the only new IP shown at the Xbox One reveal last month. The quick clip back then showed a boat crashing through a bridge. Xbox One exclusive. Character survived a science experiment that “broken down time, causing it to stutter and freeze.” Explosion happens, but the main character Jack freezes time, and catches the woman frozen mid-explosion. The frozen scene then gives in and un-freezes, continuing with the explosion.

1:07: Forza 5. A car rises up from the stage. Touting better A.I. Called “Drivatar.” Get it? Avatar? A car game? Like a Netflix recommendation engine, your Drivatar learns your racing style. Your Drivatar races while you’re not playing, and when you log back in you gain credits. It’s basically the racing game version of MMO skill gains while you’re not logged in. It appears your opponents in-game are other people’s Drivatars. New trailer, all in-game footage. Shiny, sleek cars racing around.

1:02: Killer Instinct shown off for a hot minute. Insomniac, Sony’s once-lover, on the Microsoft stage, showing off a new IP, Sunset Overdrive. “A stylized open-world shooter.” Cartoony guy parkours through a city, shooting bullets that have a smiley face on the front. His buddy that is literally shooting vinyl records saves him from an ambush by maybe-mutant, maybe-zombies, maybe-both monsters.

12:53: Onto the Xbox One. Trailer for Ryse: Son of Rome. Someone literally coughs in a silent audience. The world first heard of Ryse, by Crytek, a couple of years or so ago. The trailer showcased a bunch of Romans in armor, making a D-Day style landing on a beach, crashing a large ship onto the shore like in Speed 2. The game looks like a God of War style action game, complete with quicktime events and brutal kills. Romans slowly, methodically advancing using the iconic Phalanx formation while being blasted by hails of arrows. The same quicktime kills have already been performed a bunch. A cutscene catapult destroys a tower, and the clip is over. Seemingly a timed launch exclusive to Xbox One.

12:50:Max the Curse of Brotherhood shown again, which we’ve known about for a while. A cutesy, Pixar-esque platformer, that’s oddly violent for the aesthetic style. Followed by Dark Souls II, which the world has also known about. “Go beyond death.” Both of which is for the 360.

12:47:World of Tanks revealed for Xbox 360, built specifically for the console. Coming this summer Clips of tanks blowing stuff up, mainly other tanks and countryside.

12:44: New Xbox 360 design, available today, to look similar to the Xbox One design. New Xbox Live Gold member program — two free game downloads to keep, Assassin’s Creed II and Halo 3.

12:40: A very Metal Gear Solid cast list of characters, featuring a sniper “deprived” of her voice, unfortunately called “Quiet.”

12:36: It has begun. BeOne? Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Snake (of the Big Boss variety) on a horse. As he rides the horse, he hangs off the side and uses it for cover. “A new breed of stealth.””Deeper stealth action.” Realistic passage of time, showing Snake smoking.

12:28: Just a few minutes now, everybody. This action movie music is really pumping us up. If that isn’t getting you, though, maybe this will: